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Habermas and Gauchet on religion in postsecular society. A critical assessment

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Abstract

This article seeks to demonstrate that in his recent reading of the role of religion in the postsecular public realm, Habermas overlooks a most fundamental dimension of religion: its power to symbolically institute communities. For his part, Gauchet starts from a vision of religion in which this fundamental dimension is central. In his evaluation of the role of religion in postsecular society, he therefore arrives at results which are very different from those of Habermas. However, I believe that Gauchet too underestimates the extent to which religion’s power of symbolic community institution has remained intact within modern, postsecular society. In support of this position, I show how relatively heterogeneous phenomena within Western societies, such as the renewed importance of religion in the public realm, the revival of certain forms of nationalism and the associated demand for recognition of group rights and hence for forms of legal pluralism, may prefigure a new transformation of the public realm.

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Notes

  1. Cooke (2006, p. 189, 2007), Lafont (2007).

  2. Habermas (2005, p. 116).

  3. Habermas (1996, p. 5).

  4. Habermas (1996, p. 103, 1998, p. 37).

  5. Habermas (1998, pp. 43–44).

  6. Habermas (1998, p. 38), Cooke (2000, p. 953).

  7. Habermas (1998, p. 42). For the epistemic content of legal norms as the outcome of public deliberative processes, see Habermas (1996, pp. 121, 147, 151, 2005, p. 126), Cooke (2000, p. 952, 2007, p. 224), Geenens (2007, pp. 363, 365), Lafont (2007, p. 253).

  8. Habermas (2005, p. 115).

  9. Habermas (2005, pp. 116, 137).

  10. Habermas (2005, pp. 132–133).

  11. Habermas (2005, p. 133).

  12. Habermas (2005, pp. 133–134).

  13. Habermas (2005, p. 140).

  14. Habermas (2001, p. 14).

  15. Habermas (2005, p. 269).

  16. Habermas (2005, pp. 117–118, 145).

  17. Habermas (2005, pp. 137, 145).

  18. Rawls (1993, pp. 58–66).

  19. See inter al. Rawls (1993, pp. 217–218, 226).

  20. Habermas (2005, p. 133).

  21. Lafont (2007, p. 245).

  22. Habermas (2005, p. 117).

  23. See in this respect inter al. Habermas (1996, pp. 16, 18–19).

  24. Habermas (2005, p. 267).

  25. Gauchet (1997). For analyses of Gauchet’s position in contemporary French political thought, see Doyle (2003, 2006), Moyn (2004, 2005), Behrent (2004), Weymans (2005). An account of his own intellectual biography is presented in Gauchet (2003).

  26. A survey of Gauchet’s intellectual development regarding the interrelatedness of religion and politics is offered in Gauchet (2005); see also Kalyvas (1999).

  27. Gauchet (2005, pp. 12, 70). In this respect, Gauchet relies on Clastres (1974); see Gauchet (2005, pp. 91–180). For a critical assessment of Gauchet’s indebtedness to Clastres, see Moyn (2005).

  28. Gauchet (2005, pp. 64, 66).

  29. Gauchet (2005, p. 74). This idea in Gauchet resumes Lefort’s concept of ‘the political’: the underlying societal structure that institutes a particular distribution of knowledge, law and power, and which is disclosed most clearly by unravelling the symbolic structure of power (Lefort 1986, pp. 17–30, 251–300). For a discussion of the political in Lefort, see Flynn (2005, pp. 115, 121–122) and Doyle (2003, pp. 77–78).

  30. Gauchet (2005, p. 13).

  31. Gauchet (1985).

  32. Gauchet (2005, p. 18).

  33. Gauchet (2005, pp. 46, 48).

  34. Gauchet (2005, p. 64).

  35. Gauchet (2003, p. 330).

  36. Moyn (2005, p. 181).

  37. Gauchet (2005, p. 453).

  38. Gauchet (2003, p. 329).

  39. The structure of representation thus converges with the structure of the ‘original supplement’ in Derrida: the derivative (here: the state as representation of society) is the condition of possibility, and therefore the origin (!) of the original (here: society). Only through this representation does society as society come into being. In his reading of the American Declaration of Independence, Derrida has masterfully expounded this logic of representation (Derrida 1984). See Lindahl (2006, pp. 893ff.) for a similar elaboration of this logic of representation.

  40. Gauchet (2005, p. 145).

  41. Gauchet (2005, p. 74).

  42. Gauchet (1997).

  43. Gauchet (2002, pp. 335–339).

  44. Gauchet (2002, pp. 339–340).

  45. Gauchet (1998, pp. 59–60).

  46. Gauchet (1998, pp. 61–62).

  47. For a probing analysis of the nation state exhorting self-sacrificing citizens, see Anderson (1991, pp. 143–144).

  48. Gauchet (1997, p. 186).

  49. Gauchet (2002, p. 340).

  50. Gauchet (2002, pp. 344–345).

  51. Gauchet (1998, pp. 62–63).

  52. Gauchet (1998, p. 108).

  53. Gauchet (1998, p. 111).

  54. Gauchet (1998, p. 115).

  55. Gauchet (1998, p. 117).

  56. Gauchet (1998, p. 121).

  57. Gauchet (1998, p. 124).

  58. Gauchet (1998, pp. 155–156).

  59. Gauchet (1998, pp. 121–124).

  60. Gauchet (1998, pp. 129–133).

  61. Gauchet (1998, pp. 143–151).

  62. Gauchet (2002, p. ix).

  63. Habermas (2005, pp. 119–154), Gauchet (1998).

  64. Gauchet (1997, pp. 200–207), Ferry and Gauchet (2004).

  65. In this respect Gauchet (1998, p. 11) states clearly: “In one word, we have metaphysically become democrat.”

  66. Anderson (1991, pp. 5, 10–12).

  67. Anderson (1991, pp. 143–144).

  68. The classical (religious) example of such a ‘community of destiny’ is of course the Jewish people, but one could easily understand Serbian, Russian or even American nationalism along the same lines.

  69. Young (1997, p. 402).

  70. Habermas (1998, pp. 205–210, 2005, pp. 277, 305).

  71. Taylor (1995, pp. 255–256).

  72. Taylor (1995, p. 248).

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    Antoon Braeckman

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Braeckman, A. Habermas and Gauchet on religion in postsecular society. A critical assessment. Cont Philos Rev 42, 279–296 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11007-009-9108-y

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